Posted on 01/27/2017 11:09:36 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
NAFTA
When President Bill Clinton signed the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in December 1993, he predicted that “NAFTA will tear down trade barriers between our three nations, create the world’s largest trade zone, and create 200,000 jobs in [the U.S.] by 1995 alone. The environmental and labor side agreements negotiated by our administration will make this agreement a force for social progress as well as economic growth.” Twenty-three years later, scholars and policy makers often disagree about the impact that NAFTA has had on economic growth and job generation in the U.S. That impact, they say, is not always easy to disentangle from other economic, social and political factors that have influenced U.S. growth.
(Excerpt) Read more at knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu ...
All you need to know:
“Contrary to the promises of the leaders who promoted it, NAFTA did not make Mexico converge to the United States in per capita income, nor did it solve Mexico’s employment problems or stem the flow of migration.”
It sure helped Mexico and Canada more than it helped us -we became welfare agents for both the other countries.
We became welfare agents for Canada and Mexico because the politicians we elected handed our checkbooks to them. Not because we can get bananas from Mexico at 99 cents/pound in the dead of Winter.
The politicians leveraged NAFTA to facilitate much of the open checkbooks. We were getting bananas year round way before NAFTA - I kind of miss the days when we got different fruits and vegetables in season - they were not "doctored" to last longer (and taste worse) and it made them more appreciated when fresh was available with cans being the back up for off season.
I see this argument a lot. I read a piece on Heritage today about how welfare undermines the institution of marriage. So would you have me believe that NAFTA is anti-marriage?
Academia always has one answer. ‘
‘”The situation is too complex Send more money so that we can begin our 60 year study.
Anybody else remember, how Bill Clinton trotted out Al Gore to debate NAFTA on TV with Ross Perot???
And the media conclusion was that Al Gore soundly defeated Ross Perot in that debate, and that Perot was a fool etc and that Gore was masterful in defending NAFTA.
Son of a commie lawyer Bill Gates invented a capitalist marketing system that did more to create employment and to bring people from poverty to the middle class, and from the 3rd World to the 1st World economies than all the government programs worldwide combined.
Think back to 1980. IBM was the leader in big computers. Radio Shack was the leader in small computers. Bill Gates made his first million at Radio Shack. But Radio Shack rejected Gates marketing strategy and the concept of operating system compatibility. IBM didn’t have a clue about the PC market...but knew they were scared to death that the PC might become a mainframe on the desktop.
So Bill Gates convinced IBM to let him use the IBM compatible slogan to sell something that IBM explicitly required to be non-compatible. (the McIntosh was IBM compatible) meaning you could run the IMS database on it with just minor changes. But Steve Jobs 1.0 was a clueless as IBM and Radio Shack what to do next.)
Bill Gates never had the best OS, never the best word or spreadsheet. He had nothing except a brilliant capitalist marketing system.
Steve Jobs 2.0 came along later to convince people who made money off Bill Gates to buy gadgets they never knew they needed ... another capitalist marketing trick that Steve Jobs 1.0 learned to become 2.0.
If the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs emerges to figure out how to exploit IOT or something not yet even on our radar then there will be another economic growth period.
If no new greedy capitalist emerges, we wont have economic growth.
Look at Mexico. The elites live a lifestyle our billionaires envy. Millions of the poor live at the town dump and scrounge for food. The elites look like they just stepped off a plane from Madrid, and the poor are all Mestizo.
And they call us racist?
The heroic and majestic US “Captains of Industry™” unleashed the power of the Mestizo slave and made a lot money in the process. All the average American got was a pink slip and a bottle of tequila.
It also happens to be far more healthful to eat natural fruits in their season, directly because they are more healthy, and indirectly because it induces one to vary his diet.
I basically agree.
I heard a neocon (Hugh Hewitt) once denounce hemp as a legalized food because there was no great demand for it; he insisted that any argument for promoting it as a food was purely artificial and invalid.
He obviously did not understand what you do: that you can create a product, and then a market for it - and prosper thereby.
A superior marketing plan for a mediocre product will usually beat a mediocre marketing plan for a superior product. Windows/PC is probably the best example ever. An example of the obverse might be Betamax.
In the case of hemp, it already exists naturally, and has an extraordinary nutritional profile: globulin protein, and essential fatty acids.
As it happens, hemp is one of the most nutritious and important foods in human history. It is tragic that its conflation with marijuana has caused it to be unavailable here for so long.
Washington and other Founders were hemp farmers. The marijuana laws were suspended in WWII to once again grow hemp for industrial purposes (fiber, in particular).
(I have never smoked marijuana in my life; I eat hemp seed - technically, an achene - almost daily.)
I heard a true conservative interviewed by Barbara Simpson long ago. He asserted that NAFTA was dispossessing the poorest farm laborers (functionally like share croppers) by taking their lands and giving them to the oligarchs; he said that this prompted the great wave of illegal invasion from Mexico: They suddenly had no home and no livelihood.
Mexico is run by a ruthless oligarchy, and I think the Neocons are just fine with perpetuating their power.
NAFTA is nasty.
No, progressive liberalism undermines the institution of marriage. And, from all the fatherless Latinos, lack of immigration control evidently does the same.
I guess you think NAFTA is a good thing despite our huge deficits under it - don't know for sure. When trade deals become welfare programs for other Nations, we have a problem and the People ought to be pissed.
Totally agree - nothing tastes like it used to these days - I hate the "new and improved" ways of getting "fresh" produce to the markets year round. Fruits used to be a special treat from late Spring to late Fall (berries to pears with most others in between). These days, they look/feel/taste like crap and you get tired of them (both from availability and from the lousy eating experience).
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